Duke
Senior Member.
And any muckraking, yellow journalist looking to discredit a public figure who needs to have spooks tell him to look into that individual's interactions with law enforcement should probably find another career.
Intercept Article on David Grusch's Past - Allegations of a Smear Campaign
- Thread starter Amathia
- Start date
testchamber1
New Member
I mean, seems like that is what is happening. But the worst thing is the lack of journalistic integrity. It's so easy to ask the right questions respectfully (one example in mind is greenewald, who gets a lot of hate for poking at the card pyramid that is ufology).
Amathia
Senior Member
His explanation seems ad-hoc. Coulthart and Grusch being too hasty to assume this info was leaked rather than obtained legally only happened the night prior to this article's publication. The article was already being written before anything he cites as an example of them "not being rigorous" even happened. The only real "angle" the article itself seems to have is this weird half-assed take:
If you read the final published piece and subtract everything related to what happened the night before its publication, what are you even left with? The article reads like something cobbled together without a clear thesis or point the author was trying to make. It's convenient that he can now say it's about "their lack of rigour", but that's obviously not what the point was when he was writing it, and its a point that he can only even defend on the basis of what happened in the process of writing it itself.
Grusch’s ability to keep his security clearance appears to contrast with the government’s treatment of other employees. Shortly after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, for example, dozens of White House staffers were reportedly denied clearances for past marijuana use — including in states where it was legal.
I think his other comments are far more revealing about what he was really getting at:
Says more about him than it does about Grusch. What a childish, ignorant, demeaning way to refer to a person as "a drunk". He obviously has no idea that yes, in fact, alcoholism is a mental health struggle. It's called Substance Use Disorder and it's well documented to have a high rate of co-morbidity with PTSD (very frequently because alcohol use is one way veterans learn to cope and self-medicate to manage their symptoms).
1:08 audience: what's the value of reporting on mental health struggles?
ken: being a drunk is a mental health struggle?
audience: do you feel like this information kinda invalidates his testimony?
ken: if the guys a drunk? yea it makes me a bit suspicious
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deirdre
Senior Member.
Greenwalde posted just the 22 mins with Ken. So a bit easier to digest then the twitter link.
this bit is now at 16:10
Source: https://youtu.be/rlzIu0KIDHM?t=972
To repeat what Ken said:
And no, it was not a lone journalist, though it could have been.
It was 'intel guys'.
That's the data, for whomever is willing and able to follow it.
I'm not interested in convincing anyone here, nor am I interested in the endlessly repeated and quite predictable insinuations, allegations, generalizations and speculations of a handful of overly active posters. I don't even read them anymore to be honest, since I'm interested in data and where it leads. I know in this case not many people here are willing to follow.
So no, it was not his wife nor his ex-wife, though it could have been.
"I was getting bits and pieces from different people. You know how these intel people are vague, they'll be like 'look into his background'. They'll be like, um, I'm trying to think of how to say this...in a way that's like, rigorous, multiple people told me to just look at any run ins with law enforcement in the past. And it was vague."
And no, it was not a lone journalist, though it could have been.
It was 'intel guys'.
That's the data, for whomever is willing and able to follow it.
I'm not interested in convincing anyone here, nor am I interested in the endlessly repeated and quite predictable insinuations, allegations, generalizations and speculations of a handful of overly active posters. I don't even read them anymore to be honest, since I'm interested in data and where it leads. I know in this case not many people here are willing to follow.
LilWabbit
Senior Member
I can only answer from my experience of serving a modern military organization with a personnel strength of hundreds of thousands which is sizeable yet much smaller than the armed forces of the US.
The bedrock of a modern, legally mandated, defence organization is its underlying ethos of protecting civilians from armed aggression. The military code and honour of being a protector/defender, rather than a harrasser/retaliator, of civilians irrespective of who they are, runs deep and is not mere lip-service whereby we polish the veneer of an establishment which is actually rotten to the core or rife with corruption. In fact, we're relatively free from a particular scourge which sometimes plagues the police force -- namely the tendency to regard the civilian population with a certain degree of cynicism whereby every type of group produces a percentage of convicted felons despite the appearance of innocence. For the military, they're all just nice little sheep to be fenced in and guarded, and whatever else failings they have do not concern us. We'll leave it for the police and other civilian authorities.
Sure, we're all humans and you're bound to find individuals, especially in huge establishments, that are not only unethical but veritably commit crimes for which they have to face legal consequences. But overall, the rank and file of a defence organization has a kind of an adult and professional version of a boyscout culture that runs across all compartments, branches and military disciplines, with many compartment-specific (and sometimes highly peculiar and even amusing) sub-cultures such as that of the Air Force, Navy, various special operations commands, the Marine Corps, etc.
Only a sinister and unprofessional organization, used to operating outside the purview of law, would conspire to persecute and retaliate "whistleblowers" rather than pursue legal means openly, robustly and professionally. I find it very hard to believe that the DoD is genuinely as sinister as painted by, yes, conspiracy theorists. At worst, certain individuals with an axe to grind with Grusch could have taken matters in their own hand. But if so, it's highly dishonourable as it's both unethical and since taking matters in your own hand runs counter to the very soul, the very core training, of what it means to be a soldier.
So that's my long-winded answer.
However, I do think it's very possible that the DoD has a whole category of highly classified information, maybe even a few extra-sensitive programs, the knowledge of which needs to be withheld even from Congress 'oversight' by invoking the President's executive privilege if all else fails. This type of 'check and balance', whereby the President isn't fully subservient to the 'elected representatives', serves the interest of the people simply due to the higher risk of leakage from politicians as opposed to duty-bound officers observing single-mindedly an honour code and their assigned duties under law. The Members of Congress are ultimately public figures more bent on votes than on duty to uphold national security secrets whose reasons of classification they might (1) not fully understand or (2) agree with in their sometimes arrogant presumption of greater intelligence and judgment as America's elected leaders. If there weren't any trust issues on critical details of sensitive capabilities leaking, if only out of the unintentional sloppiness of politicians, to the public and, by extension, to the adversarsies, such an executive privilege wouldn't perhaps be necessary.
P.S. Whilst the option that Grusch got actually retaliated by the DoD for snooping around non-alien classified programs is far likelier than retaliations for exposing alien secrets, it's still far unlikelier than the main hypothesis of ufologists snooping around beyond their need-to-know within the Pentagon and becoming overly paranoid and angered after being rightfully denied access in the interest of national security.
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfA5nf9XPM8
A quite detailed interview with Klippenstein. Krystal and Saagar gently but firmly push him on if he thinks he might be part of a disinfo campaign.
Imperfect machine transcript (Ken talks too fast)
https://otter.ai/u/axtck41Tlnla0UbIREabmIBn57g?utm_source=copy_url
One point he made that seemed odd was that it was lower-level guys that he got the info from, not the higher level "demons". And the the sources were UFO skeptics who did not like Grusch
11:23 That's why I try in my reporting, to find them, as opposed to them, like coming to me independently, you know, and there. And again, these things are complicated. These are not monoliths. There's the Senior Executive Class, the appointees, those guys are the demons that you really want to watch out for. And so, I mean, the people that I talked to clearly didn't like him, and they didn't believe them about the UFO stuff. And so insofar as that is motive, that's true. Sure. No, I want to be very frank about Yeah, right. But it's a little different than like, a Biden administration appointee being like, this is embarrassing, we have to destroy this guy. It's so so the concerns are fair, but I just want to point out that it's different.[/ex[
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gabelewis
Member
Seems like motivated reasoning to make assumptions about what those words mean precisely.
We can assume at the very least, most of Grusch's former colleagues are "intel guys" - as that's the field he worked in. It could imply a conspiracy by intel to discredit Grusch, or it could imply a former colleague wished to share something for a reason they didn't reveal.
It could also mean a lot of other things. You're running very far with a very dim torch on this.
I can imagine that we're getting close to off-topic, but since the motivations of the journalist are being questioned, a few critics have taken shots at the fact that Klippenstein's father is a Theoretical Chemist for Argonne - a Department of Energy funded lab. Since the Department of Energy is part of UFO lore and conspiracy theory, I thought it was worth acknowledging here:
Klippenstein confirmed this is correct - but I am having trouble finding the tweet. Will post it if I do.
EDIT: Here's the confirmation:
Source: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1689723119273988096
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deirdre
Senior Member.
this bit is a bit disingenuous. Marijuana use in the United States is ILLEGAL on a FEDERAL level. it doesn't matter what "states" do. Alcohol consumption is legal on all levels.
Article: Well, I include in the story, example of the dozens of White House staffers who had their clearances revoked for smoking weed, including in states where it was legal, right places where it's legal, so like, this is part of the clearance process.
And i'm glad Saagar hammered the (paraphrase) "do we know if he is a current alcoholic (or if he ever actually was one)". Because though he skirted the questions, this 'reporter' doesn't know if Grusch is a current alcoholic or ever technically was one. I know people will argue the semantics of what an alcoholic is, but i think the context this reporter is insinuating is clear. Self-medicating during a time of trauma, before you receive treatment -and likely treatment prescribed medication- does not make one an alcoholic.
I drank a shit ton after Sandy Hook, then stopped after a couple years. (i dont like alcohol really). I'm not an alcoholic.
LilWabbit
Senior Member
Thanks, watched the whole Klippenstein interview. My seven takeaways:
(1) Klippenstein indeed sought to dig up dirt on Grusch in the name of journalistically "vetting" someone whose credentials are being broadcast and applauded without the slightest criticism. (Not my favourite kind of journalism, but it's not illegal nor entirely equivalent to rags and tabloids.)
(2) In order to accomplish 1, Klippenstein approached his mid-level DoD (IC and Air Force) sources for tips. The sources didn't approach him nor conspire to retaliate Grusch in any way.
(3) The sources gave generic descriptions on Grusch's unreliability and gave Klippenstein a "sense" of what further things to dig up through VOIA requests, rather than pointing Klippenstein directly to the specifics he discovered only afterwards through the VOIA. I don't entirely trust this account though and Klippenstein may be protecting his sources who may have gotten a bit carried away themselves in gossiping about Grusch.
(4) I got the sense the sources did mention alcoholism before the FOIA request confirmed it.
(5) Klippenstein's main angle is alcoholism which the wife mentions which, to Ken, may or may not be relevant to Grusch's congressional testimony. To me, personally, Grusch's alcoholism is totally irrelevant as an isolated fact.
(6) Whilst there's no evidence of the intelligence community conspiring to retaliate Grusch by 'leaking' information on his alcohol-induced incidents (technically 'leakage' is an incorrect term when discussing public information anyway), Klippenstein's own personal little smear campaign against Grusch is distasteful and can justifiably feel like retaliation to Grusch.
(7) Due to 6, Klippenstein's slimy approach has only served Grusch's cause further rather than helping the "skeptics". This is where I wholeheartedly agree with @Itsme.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Is the referance to "not being rigorous" in relation to this single article or to Coulthart's handling of the story overall? If it's about Coulthart's overall reporting, than that's a legitimate complaint. Coulthart may have been a journalist in the past and maybe still is, but in this case he's right there with Kean, an advocate for UFOlogy and disclosure.
Coulthart's credibility is mediocre at best in relation to UFOs. We have thread already where he claims there is a crashed UFO so big, instead of moving it, some government concealed it by building a huge building over it. He knows this, but of course he can tell us where it is.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ross-coultharts-huge-buried-ufo.13040/
The whole thing is over 2 hours, but the first 15-20 minutes is enough to get Coultharts attitude and beliefs. He's on a mission against the "bleeding debunkers", the "cadre of supposed experts on Social Media" and "the Tweet bots saying 'where's the evidence, where's the evidence?". He defiantly comes across as someone who has an ax to grind.
It also makes me wonder how in control of the narrative he is. Is Coulthart providing the spin?
Here is the video fromt he other thread:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUZUyck6KoU
Amathia
Senior Member
The Article itself doesn't talk about anything related to rigor or how the subject has been reported on by Coulthart. From the interview it seems fairly clear the implication is "how Coulthart and Grusch handled this whole leakage thing is a good indication of the sloppy reasoning they employ generally in other matters".
He then cites a strawman of the type of reasoning he thinks Grusch is guilty of engaging in which is "The US does in fact have SAPs, some of which are engaged in recovery of UAPs, some of which we don't know what they are. And therefore to jump from "we don't know what they are" to "oh therefore they must be extraterrestrials", that's what I don't think is sustained by the facts."
Minute 3:20 in the video:
Source: https://youtu.be/rlzIu0KIDHM
The problem is we have no evidence whatsoever that that is the logic by which Grusch arrived at his conclusions. He has never stated "we don't know what these are, it must be ETs", he's literally telling people that people who actively and formerly worked in these programs have told him they are ETs in nature.
Maybe a person isn't being rational if they believe such things from their colleagues in the intelligence community, but that's not the reasoning this journalist is addressing. He's just making shit up on the spot and attacking the strawman he just conjured out of thin air.
And on a related note, I'm not sure about anyone else here, but if @NorCal Dave, @Duke, and @LilWabbit all privately messaged me and started telling me in confidence the things they've been exposed to and seen in their line of work, and that some of these things include handling technology that did not seem to have any kind of known human origin, I'd sure as hell have a lot of thinking to do. Multiply that times forty and if the forty individuals are as reasonable, intelligent, and rational as the three I just mentioned, and I didn't have any reason to suspect a coordinated disinfo campaign was taking place against me, I'm not exactly sure what Id believe.
Depending on what was shown to him and who his sources were it's not clear at all that Grusch is engaging in anything even remotely like the kind of sloppy reasoning Klippenstein attributes to him.
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jarlrmai
Senior Member.
Pre Grusch, what were your views on the UFO/UAP story?
fizzBuzz
Active Member
So, since Grusch came out to News Nation, I would imagine his life has changed a bit. He's now a widely known public figure that is probably scrutinized by most people. @Amathia, in your expert opinion, could this potentially cause new emotions that can revive his PTSD, or would that be a separate issue altogether?
It just seems like one whom has recently defeated PTSD could be in a vulnerable state. An analogy would be a person finally recovers from years of severe depression and then their spouse dies. How does this typically work in regards to PTSD, in your opinion?
It just seems like one whom has recently defeated PTSD could be in a vulnerable state. An analogy would be a person finally recovers from years of severe depression and then their spouse dies. How does this typically work in regards to PTSD, in your opinion?
Duke
Senior Member.
As I said earlier, no doubt in my mind someone provided Klippenstein the information to fish in the specific law enforcement pond where he got his information. He claims he got only vague comments from the "intel guys," including looking for "run ins" with law enforcement. Klippenstein should have known that, but be that as it may.
So with that in mind, sounds like he 1) either brute forced his research through every address he could find for Grusch over his adult life through multi-jurisdictional LE agencies, or 2) he talked to someone with personal knowledge who gave him specifics. The latter makes more sense to me since we know the "intel guys" didn't give him specifics. My guess is an ex-wife/girlfriend, or possibly a divorce decree/testimony transcript that is available through the public domain.
I'm more interested in your "lack of journalist integrity" comment. I'm not a journalist, nor have I gone to "J School." From a layman's perspective however, I know Klippenstein found knowledgeable sources who gave him factual information that he used to legally obtain official documents that he reproduced for his readers to prove his story. That story didn't paint a pretty picture, but it's truthful and supported by documentation.
Contrasting that, we have Knapp, an "award winning investigative journalist," who has reported the claims of Grusch with no supporting evidence based entirely on what he's been told by a guy who admits everything he claims was based on what he claims he was told. Those claims include people having been murdered. Proof? Evidence? Documentation? Nada. Journalist integrity? You tell me.
I find Klippenstein's article about Grusch to be sad and even somewhat distasteful. Some of the comments attributed to him from the podcast cited above I find reprehensible. (I have a sibling who's an alcoholic.) But it was Grusch who made the decision to become a public figure, opening himself to public scrutiny. You'd think his "award winning investigative journalist" colleague would/should have warned him what he potentially had in store. Or did Knapp even know the sadder aspects of Grusch's life? I submit if he didn't, he should have.
Finally, someone here claimed the "intel guys" used Klippenstein to get Grusch. I can make the same claim about Knapp and Corbell havinb used Grusch to their own personal gain. No accident those guys were sitting directly behind the witnesses at the hearing. They hung a troubled man who had honorably served his country out to dry in front of the world. Integrity my ass.
If he's a drunk, like Ken alleges (which by the way is a nice example of sloppy reasoning), the million dollar question of course is: Why did he keep his security clearance?
That question is asked at 10:18 in the interview below:
After a long and painful silence, Ken asks to repeat the question and subsequently gives a non-answer with lots of smoke and mirrors:
That question is asked at 10:18 in the interview below:
After a long and painful silence, Ken asks to repeat the question and subsequently gives a non-answer with lots of smoke and mirrors:
Note how he now remembers hearing positive things about Grush:
Ken: um… I think that uh … in……..
I'm sorry could you repeat the last part I cut out a little bit
Interviewer: What do you make of the fact that he still has his security clearance when people who simply smoked pot don’t, especially given how the security clearance is kind of being used to shore up his credibility.
Ken: Right, so there's an enormous amount of discretion in the clearance process they love to pretend like it's scientific but in the same way I mean I assume viewers have seen critiques of the kinds of science that law enforcement relies on to make cases and the limitations of that science all of that is true of the Intelligence Community as well um you know there's questions I mean uh polygraphs for instance are not admissible in court um in in in you know many civilizing criminal cases too so it's not a science it's an art and so um if you look just as a national security reporter I've seen DOD the Pentagon tends to be more lacks than other agencies like the FBI or the CIA and so there's enormous amount of discretion and the impression I got from talking to people who had worked with him is that at least at the point that this was happening he was a well-connected and pretty favorable guy um you know he's a GS 15 and he's only 35 that's you know pretty meteoric rise um and I I want to be clear I'm not saying that's just like because he's glad-handing, people did say that um you know they considered him um in some ways to be an intelligent uh person and and you can see that how and how senior he got so quickly um but uh uh yeah I think that's basically it it's just huge uh it's not you'd be surprised it's not like a checklist it's like very much up to the um you know senior executive service and what they decide to do.
- "he was a well-connected and pretty favorable guy"
- "he's a GS 15 and he's only 35 that's you know pretty meteoric rise"
- "people did say that um you know they considered him um in some ways to be an intelligent uh person"
- "you can see that how and how senior he got so quickly"
Amathia
Senior Member
Not likely. Once you've processed a traumatic memory or memories they stay that way and your body no longer responds to those triggers by going into a fight or flight response.
PTSD symptoms resolve when you process trauma and they stay gone for good unless a new sufficiently severe traumatic event happens. In which case it's not so much that your previous ptsd has returned but rather that you have now developed PTSD again as a result of a new traumatic experience. You can process that memory just like with your previous trauma and return to normal again fairly easily though if you find a good trauma therapist.
Best example I can give is imagine he worked through his combat related PTSD and successfully processed those memories to the point of no longer meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. At any point in the future though he could find himself in a car accident and suddenly finds himself having flashbacks and nightmares about the accident as well as finds himself unable to get into a car or drive without a great deal of anxiety.
In such as case it's not that the PTSD has returned, but rather that he has a newly developed case of PTSD in response to a car accident but which is wholly disconnected from any of the previous symptoms he experienced due to his combat history.
Just like with depression, we can all develop PTSD at any point in response to new life circumstances. But we can work through the new stuff and get back to living a normal and healthy life if we put in the work.
So no I don't think anything related to him being in the spotlight is likely to trigger anything related to his PTSD. Not only because it sounds like he worked through it so those triggers are gone for good, but also because trauma triggers are fairly specific things. Being in the spotlight of the media isn't the kind of thing that would trigger combat related PTSD. The most common triggers for that are things we've all probably read about: fireworks, sudden loud noises, war related content/movies, the sound of helicopters or planes, etc.
Duke
Senior Member.
How he kept his clearance is the better question. Could, and probably should, portend a Congressional investigation on the adjudication of security clearances.
Mendel
Senior Member.
I'd be certain I was being pranked because these guys are too smart to abuse their clearances that way. If they did, then they wouldn't be trustworthy.
The fact he did not hand it to you doesn't mean there isn't any. He gave his evidence to people in Congress with the appropriate clearing levels. I don't like it either but the claim there isn't any evidence is unsubstantiated though it is made over and over again.
Mendel
Senior Member.
His wife alleged it with law enforcement, it's in the report.
Here's how he kept his clearance (from the OP):
He got help and worked through his issues, apparently.
Did you actually study the data? The only incident where alcohol was involved was in 2018. The only one who claimed back then, in the moment, that he was an alcoholic was his wife. This was the year when a good friend of Grush committed suicide. I would need a drink or two if that happened to me. There is no official assessment and no official record of him being an alcoholic. None. Nada.
tobigtofool
Active Member
I can't imagine discovering aliens were real and being forced to keep quiet about it, and not becoming an alcoholic 
lockedupsafe
New Member
Playing Devil's Advocate a little here as I do personally think Coulthart is a bit of a clown at this point ("I have an anonymous source who's authorised me to reveal that his great-uncle worked at Area 51 and saw a photo of an NHI craft whilst there!") if the buried UAP story were true, and the building over the UAP was a hospital, or, I dunno, a Playstation warehouse or something, or even just a military compound full of armed soldiers, I can empathise with his uncertainty over revealing its location, given that potentially thousands of misguided believers might descend on the area and try to gain access.Coulthart's credibility is mediocre at best in relation to UFOs. We have thread already where he claims there is a crashed UFO so big, instead of moving it, some government concealed it by building a huge building over it. He knows this, but of course he can tell us where it is.
If that were the case, though, then he should have just not mentioned it at all, given he can't prove it. Or at least characterise it as "This is an unsubstantiated rumour," and not act like he's personally verified the information.
Duke
Senior Member.
The only way you can say that is if you've seen both his civilian and military personnel files, and the only way you have done that would have been if you were in his chain of command or in personnel. I guessing you were neither.
DoD personnel files are not in the public domain, nor can they be released through FOIA. Grusch can release his personnel files, however. Those files would show any administrative or punitive actions taken against him, includimg such things as mandatory alcohol counseling, as well as his civilian performance appraisals and Officer Effectiveness Reports. His files would make interesting reading.
Amathia
Senior Member
Maybe not the best hypothetical example but here's a new portion of an interview with Michael Shellenberger which once again boils down to what his sources are telling him:
Source: https://twitter.com/MikeColangelo/status/1689732977020784641/mediaviewer
"Very very senior people with high security clearances who were afraid of talking to me."
I mean, it's like a broken record at this point. At least north of a dozen retrieved non human craft. Some other sources say up to 30. All post world war 2.
I mean, unless Shellenberger is lying to us, it sounds like someone or several someones out there with credentials good enough for him to verify are lying to him and are just outright bullshitting him pretending to be afraid of telling him what they're telling him in an effort to, what, exactly?
I mean, a common thread I see is that it seems like there are quite a number of seemingly credible people behind the scenes who seem to be spreading claims about alien craft being in our possession. Whoever is making these claims seem to prima facie have credentials good enough to impress people like Coulthart, Shellenberger, Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, and David Grusch to the point that they genuinely believe what these people are telling them and put their reputations on the line to repeat what they've been told.
Who the fuck are these people behind the scenes and what on earth are they up to?
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Or, possibly, there are no people behind the scense, these people out in front of the scenes are originating the stories.
ASSUMING there are, in fact, no recovered space saucers from beyond the stars, the stories are originating through someebody either making stuff up or severely misunderstanding what they are seeing or being told. That might be one layer behind the folks we can see. Or it might not.
deirdre
Senior Member.
i doubt it's the credentials, there are alot more people with fancy credentials telling us none of it is true.
The credentials just make the story easier to sell to the masses. (this phenomenon goes in both directions of course...like the 20-40 "intel" people who told us Hunter Biden's laptop looked like Russian disinfo. The masses are more likely to believe fancy titles)
Amathia
Senior Member
I meant credentials good enough to impress the journalists who then repeat this to the masses. I mean, I guess the question this makes me want to ask is, who is doing the selling here, someone like Shellenberger, or whoever is lying to him? And if it's the latter, why are they trying to sell this to the masses in this roundabout way?
Amathia
Senior Member
Yeah I mean. At this point I'm more confident that someone is just making shit up and lying to these journos and folks like Grusch. Why tho?
gabelewis
Member
Here is my general theory: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/house-oversight-hearing-on-uaps-july-26-2023.13049/post-295656
EDIT: deleted some speculative stuff.
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deirdre
Senior Member.
it's funny?
Amathia
Senior Member
For the lulz?
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Maybe. Coulthart and Kean are not journalist when it comes to UFOs, they're advocates. They sincerely believe aliens have come to earth and that the government is hiding this fact. People like Grusch are telling them what they want to hear and confirming what they already believe. Your not putting your reputation on the line if you already believe this stuff. How many people still take Bob Lazar seriously or even Puthoff and Davis?
Blumenthal has done a number of stories with Kean and glowing pieces on people like John Mack because of his involvement in the abduction movement. Shellenberger, I don't know.
The problem right now is that all of this is still hearsay. It's anonymous people saying unsubstantiated things. And we don't know what they are saying, only the interpretation of what they said through a few reporters. Some of whom really want to hear this.
Amathia
Senior Member
When it comes to Coulthart and Kean though, were they believers before or after their alleged sources started feeding them this kind of information? If you have several high ranking people with security clearances telling you all sorts of stuff off the record about alien crash retrieval projects being real, can anyone really blame them for believing it?
I mean, I'm sure a lot of folks around here would say "no, show me the fucking bodies or gtfo" to any number of intelligence officers coming to them in private feeding them fantastical tales about aliens and government crash retrieval programs. But most people don't have such evidence standards. Like I said, I don't know wtf I'd believe if enough people I deemed credible all consistently started telling me these things. At the very least if I were a journalist I'd find the fact that so many people are coming to me and telling me these things interesting enough to at least report on it.
Idk man. Someone's gotta be fucking with people behind the scenes for whatever reason.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
I don't know their full histories, but Kean has been into UFOlogy for 20+ years and her UFO book is from 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_KeanKean has published works relating to UFOs since 2000, and has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM.[7][8] Her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, published by Penguin Random House, was a New York Times best seller.[9] Kean belongs to the UFO organization UFODATA.[10]
Coulthart seems to be a more recent convert:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_CoulthartIn 2021, Coulthart starred in The UFO Phenomenon, a special television series for Seven News in Australia that claimed to "unearth startling new evidence of UFOs from government officials and eyewitnesses that will change everything you thought you knew about the universe."[6]
In 2021, Coulthart authored a UFO-themed book titled In Plain Sight: An Investigation into UFOs and Impossible Science. Jason Colavito reviewed Coulthart's book, saying it was "less a serious analysis and more of a book report on the last works of the leaders of the faith". Colavito criticized Coulthart's work, suggesting Coulthart was exploiting current public interest in UFO's for profit, similar to UFO enthusiasts Leslie Kean and George Knapp.[7]
And it depends on who is telling you about a crash retrieval program. As we've suggested, there probably is a program for the retrieval of crashed or asylum-seeking foreign assets, particularly during the cold war. Maybe someone gets wind of it, or like us, just assumes that it probably existed/exists. Add in a bit of aliens and you might be convinced it was about crashed UFOs.
This could really use its own thread as we're off topic on Grusch's records being leaked. Maybe tomorrow if you don't start one first.
ManInBlack
Active Member
All this is a distraction from the questions that should be asked:
- Where are the first hand witnesses?
- Where is the evidence for the claims?
Throughout my life I've known many people who have had PTSD, it is not uncommon. The journalist was doing his job in that article and asking questions, although I'd wish they'd focus on the above.
I think if the 'whistle blower' was taking Hallucinogens then that would be a significant piece to write about...the rest is just noise.
- Where are the first hand witnesses?
- Where is the evidence for the claims?
Throughout my life I've known many people who have had PTSD, it is not uncommon. The journalist was doing his job in that article and asking questions, although I'd wish they'd focus on the above.
I think if the 'whistle blower' was taking Hallucinogens then that would be a significant piece to write about...the rest is just noise.
LambMaster
New Member
This made sense in the past but I'm finding it increasingly unlikely in the current situation. This thing has spiraled to the point of where it's attracting far too much attention on black programs. DoD doesn't want congressman and senators talking about investigating and auditing. They also don't want to have to disclose more than the absolute minimum regarding sensory capabilities. Maybe this has spiraled out of control regardless of the initial intention.
I had a similar hypothesis earlier on that there could be some kind of illegality going on that had aliens attached to it to discredit an investigation. These are conspiratorial speculations in themselves. I think the UFO college(?) hypothesis I read on here seems to fit best for now. That we just have a lot of believers in high places.
John J.
Senior Member.
I think we have to remember the laws of large numbers.
The US has large armed forces- 1,328,000 regular personnel, surpassed only by China and India.
Speaking generally here:
There will be personnel who hold "unusual" beliefs, people who like spinning a yarn, and some "Walter Mitty" characters.
Just as there will be some spousal abusers (across the rank structure) and- each year- a number of servicemen who commit murder, there will be a very small minority who for whatever reason like creating a drama, and others who will brazenly lie.
Assuredly, this isn't a US armed forces problem, it's a human nature problem. You will find examples of misguided, dishonest, overtly criminal or just plain weird (by their peer's standards) behaviour in any sufficiently large group of people.
The newspapers (showing my age) are full of stories of formerly respectable, professional people who (sometimes mid-career or later) have been found to be pathological fraudsters, members of some peculiar group or for some reason have done something dreadful.
More positively, a minority of people, from all different backgrounds, are sometimes revealed as having spent years doing good deeds without seeking reward, or to have made an astonishing contribution to some field without recognition, but this seems less newsworthy.
Due to human nature, and the necessarily compartmentalised and secure way that the US armed forces deal with information, it's not surprising if a small number of personnel, even of senior rank, have mistaken beliefs about what other units might be "up to".
But I think it's premature to replace a "They've got crashed UFOs" conspiracy theory with a "They want Mr. Grusch to believe they've got crashed UFOs" conspiracy theory.
The simplest explanation so far must be that the US Government and its various agencies and contractors, and the overwhelming majority (possibly all) of senior figures who might have a need to know, are telling the truth; they have no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life, and certainly don't possess anything that they believe is of ETI origin.
Mr Grusch's claims are worthy of investigation, but many of his prominent backers have a history of making remarkable claims, usually involving some agency of the US Government or the defense sector as villains, without producing evidence.
